Open Office 2.4 is Complete and Supports PDF/A-1

The Open Office project has just released the final version 2.4 of its free office software.

Open Office 2

The release, which was originally anticipated in early March to coincide with CeBIT, was delayed due to a number of bugs.

Now the final version, which is equivalent to the code base of release candidate 6 has been published. One of version 2.4’s outstanding features is its ability to export documents to PDF/A-1 (ISO 19005-1) format, which is designed for long-term archiving. Due to its status as an ISO standard, ISO 19005-1 is important for public offices. At the same time, the Base database component on Windows now supports databases in Microsoft Access 2007 format. Users will need to wait for support for further Office 2007 formats: they are on the roadmap for Open Office version 3.0 in the fall, as Jaqueline Rahemipour, the Open Office project leader Germany confirmed in an interview. Other improvements to version 2.4 include a master password which protects access to stored passwords. The Office Suite can now used HTTPS WebDAV to access documents on the Web. Additionally, the developers have reworked various details of the diagram module in line with user requests. Open Office 2.4 is available from the project website for Windows, Mac OS X and several flavors of Linux.